I have been hibernating for the past months from shooting fashion and portraitures and tomorrow is another exciting day when I explore new levels of creativity with a young dynamic team from my university students. Yes, I am a university professor in Japan teaching business and I used to shoot students as my subject for photography.

Since I turned pro in the last years, I kind of stopped taking photos of students since shooting them entails a lot of expectations management which actually conflicts with my role as a university professor. The thing with millennials is that most of them want instant gratification and portraiture photography is no instant deal. It involves careful selection of photos, post processing, and ‘consent’ from the subjects since they’re not really professional models.

Secondly, after spending hours cleaning and attaining the desired image I intended it to be, some young models toast it up on Instagram or Facebook with all those crazy filters. Worse, some of them demand immediately a jpg copy so then can instantly share whats going on without consideration to the original concept of the shoot.

And yes, no concept, no shoot. I always begin with a concept. Tomorrow’s concept is a beauty shoot and I want to show them how uniquely beautiful they are. Probably, models are the most insecure people in the world, so constant reassurance is needed that that they are beautiful.

In this rebirth, I have learned from the past, manage expectations and discuss in detail what the shoot tomorrow will be about. Once these are clear, they maybe, if everything goes well, I will continue shooting students. They’re such a breath of fresh air to work with and that’s a bonus for a middle-aged photographer.